Newcastle Defense Key To Promotion And Survival

Mike Williamson looks a great old fashioned 6’4″ center-back at Newcastle and seems a bargain buy by Chris Hiughton and the Newcastle club.

Mike Williamson – great acquisition for Newcastle

And Kevin Nolan has today said how impressed he is with the central defender, the new addition to our already solid defense, and Mike is a no-nonsense center back in the Frank Brennan mode.

Kevin talked to the Newcastle Journal about Mike this morning:

“He is someone we needed,” “He stands out because he is an old-fashioned English centre-half who does the job.”

“If you look at the two lads at Birmingham who are getting all the plaudits right now, they just go and head the ball and do the job, making sure the centre-forwards don’t score, simple as that.”

“It used to be that everyone wanted their central defenders to play the ball but maybe it’s changing again. Mike is like those old-fashioned defenders. He has bedded in really well.”

The Stoke-born player has said he wants to play as much as possible through the end of the season, after having no first team games at Portsmouth from September 1st until he signed last month for Newcastle.

But his signing was only after they couldn’t get their first choice, Matthew Kilgallon, from Sheffield United.

Kilkgallon was only a substitute for Sunderland in Saturday’s game at Arsenal, and has hardly been a shining light so far for the Wearsiders, as they struggle in the Premiership this season.

Mike has started 6 games for Newcastle and there are now 14 games left and he should play in the majority of those games, well at least until Steven Taylor returns – probably in about a month.

But Mike is not only an excellent player with tremendous concentration on the field, but he’s just a great guy who seems to love being on Tyneside, where the fans are legendary in the game of football.

45,000 turned up to see Newcastle beat Preston on Saturday, and full houses should return if we get promoted in May, so Mike will be playing in front of over 52,000 fans at home – we think that will further inspire this lad.

The Newcastle defense has been outstanding this season and Harper, Coloccini Taylor(S) and Enrique are all Premier league players already.

And Chris Hughton is not surprisingly delighted with his acquisition of Mike, as he said today:

“I have been delighted with him,” “Before he came here he missed a lot of football and he was exited about getting back to playing again.”

“He knew there would be competition from Coloccini, Fitz Hall – who has also done well since arriving – and young Tamas Kadar.”

“And at some stage Steven Taylor will come back in.”

“He wanted the opportunity to play football again, that was the only thing he thought about.”

If Newcastle do get promoted we are starting to think we may even be able to survive in the Premier League, and that the foundation for that has to be our defense.

We have some very good defenders already at the club, and they have all played very well this season.

Maybe in the summer we need a couple of full backs to come in and offer some serious competition to Simpson and Enrique.

And we will need more creativity in the middle of the park, but the lads will at least fight like hell in every game next season, something we didn’t do much of last season.

One thing we always want to see is the 11 players representing the Newcastle club – whoever they are – to be willing to give their all for the club – if they do that they rarely get criticized – even when they lose.

That has to be a big plus for Newcastle United – and hey – this sounds like the days of old!

6 comments so far

I see Best has committed more fouls that Smith this season… thats not a good stat to have! He has actually managed to score this season though so suppose that would make up for it, if the goals were for us! lol

Williamson looks a really good player, hopefully he can shape-up to the big boys next season, presuming we get promoted.

Wonder if we’ll sell Collo for big bucks in the summer and then have the Williamson-Taylor partnership in the centre? would be risky to sell the good, proven back-up, but if we could get decent cash for collo I suppose we could get another bassong and williamson and still have cash left over for a couple of undiscovered routledge’s and vuckic’s! I think that is the long-term game plan – find the next generation rather than buying the big-buck money-grabbers.

And frankly, I agree with such a policy. Give CH at least a couple of seasons in the PL to grow the squad from where we are now, bringing in more and more youngsters who gradually make it into the 1st team, them reap the benefits of long-term financial stability. Arsenal are the obvious example, but the likes of Villa and Everton are also mroe in-point examples of this process in operation. No rush, give the manager a long time period to complete the job. CH is learning game by game, I think he can be a great manager in teh future, and just like Nile Ranger, if he’s given the chance to gain the necessary experience, he can be great for the toon.

I think Best is a bit gutted as he could have had two goals easy this season. Smiths pass was heading straight for Best but Nolans perfectly timed run left him right in front of him to score. He also missed the sitter that Taylor got a few weeks ago. I dont think the last taylor goal counts as another missed chance as he was well in front of the ball and barely scrambled to get back.

How can you say that, if by Christmas we were bottom of the league you’d be happy giving him another 18 months in charge?

Not that for one minute I’d want that to happen but you can’t predict what will happen and what should happen in such a way. Bit like starting with a team and predicting substitutions at certain times….. can’t be done, got to react to the situation most of the time.

Yes, because if we sack the manager everytime we go on a bad run we’ll end up as a yo-yo club.

Its better to have a long-term plan, and then stick to it. Stopping the revolving door at the toon manager’s office is, I believe, the first necessary step to that. Look at the sucessful teams in the PL over the last 15 years, long-term managers who are not axed “if by christmas we were bottom of the league” ALWAYS do better than managers who have the pressure of flickle fans who want success now. Without a stong, long-term plan, we’ll be crap for a long time.

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